Super Game Boy

A SNES cartridge released in 1994 by Nintendo.

This cartridge simply allowed Game Boy games to be played on SNES. The main advantage, of course, was that the screen size was much bigger and the picture quality was much better (remember, this was way before Game Boy Color came out).

Also, the screen colors could be chosen, so the whole game could be pseudo-colored. Also, AFAIK some games included the game coloring information - the game worked in color on SGB and grayscale on normal GB.

As far as I know, this wasn't that much of a success, but many games did support SGB (it is not emulated in modern systems, though). After this thing, Nintendo did it right with Gameboy Color, a GB-compatible system that also had more power.

Some later Game Boy and Game Boy Colour cartridges contained rumble-packs (such as Top Gear Racing), designed to enhance reali... check that, they were just a stupid battery draining gimmick. To return to the point, don't ever, ever think about putting one of these into a Super Game Boy. Your SNES will make hilarious clacking noises for a few minutes as it shakes around the desk like a mobile-phone on vibrate, then cease to function forever.

The SGB was also emulated within the Pokemon Stadium games on the Nintendo 64, although with additional options to increase the emulation speed up to four times real-time.

Lastly, some early previews of the Nintendo Gamecube were running some form of "Super" Gameboy Advance emulation - reports from E3 had Gameboy Advance plugged into the controller ports of the Gamecube, with the GBA graphics displayed on television screens. This technology now seems to have materialised in the Nintendo Gamecube Game Boy Player - this fits in one of the expansion ports on the underside of your Cube, and lets you play Game Boy, Game Boy Colour and Game Boy Advance titles on your TV screen. If you have the Gamecube GBA Cable, you can plug in 1-4 GBAs and use them to control the games, and even play link-games (possibly split screen?).

An unusual accessory for the Super Nintendo (Super Famicom) entertainment system, the Super Game Boy was designed to run Game Boy games on a full-sized TV screen. The advantage was that users could sit at a comfortable distance from the brightly-colored TV instead of staring closely at a non-backlit LCD. A few games, notably Donkey Kong Land (Donkey Kong GB) for Game Boy featured additional borders and graphics that would display around the screen. All of the games were presented in at least some kind of color: while the more advanced games had color codes pre-programmed into the unit, users could use the extra buttons on the SNES game pad to switch pallettes to their liking.

Because of the primitive nature of Game Boy games and the pervasiveness of the Game Boy hardware (particularly among hardcore gamers) the Super Game Boy was a modest success at best. Its successor, the Super Game Boy 2, featured a distinctive translucent blue casing three years before the iMac did. Sold mainly in Japan but sporadically elsewhere, the Super Game Boy 2 allowed a Super NES and Game Boy to be connected by a link cable.

The Super Game Boy does not accept Game Boy Advance (GBA) games. For GBA games, there are two options to play on a TV: an internal kit called GBATV (about $70) will let you connect your GBA directly to a television, and the GameCube Game Boy Player (about $50) will add GBA playability on the Nintendo GameCube.